Dr. Chaos suggested that I might enjoy The Waking Up podcast by Sam Harris, because, while he is very vocal about his atheism, and I am very vocal about there being no way to be sure there is no God, that he reminded her of arguing with me.  I did.  It was a hoot ( Read more... )

Main themes ( Read more... )

You might recall my horrifaction about Peter Watt's TMI entry in his Rifter's Newscrawl (As an obit for his beloved father, the Rev Watts, a Baptist church adminstrator, he outs him as a life-long homosexual, as well as the part where his mother was not happy with this. Sweet Jesus, what a purgative gush of private info.) And how I had realized ( Read more... )

I just figured it out last week, but I have been trying not to say it aloud for fear the words make it magically true. It is true, though. Peter Watts, that Canadian science fiction writer whose work I so enjoyed? He's one angry asshole. Online, it's one of his primary modes of being. I had seen commenters to his blog call him one, but I dismissed ( Read more... )

I think I'm done. I have caved to the trolling, caved to the mean-spirited misogyny, the lack of moderation, I'm just sick of the sly abuse. The intellectual work-out is no longer worth it for me. I want to feel sad, but I'm doing this myself, not in some grand principle-of-the-thing gesture, but because I keep floating past the website, seeing ( Read more... )

Peter Watts, that sci fi writer whose very dark and interesting fiction I have nattered on about in the past, has at age 53 gotten married for the first time, to a lady about fifteen years his younger, a pretty writer of fantasy, who has several kids of her own from a previous marriage. Congratulations! It always cheers me when people finally ( Read more... )

I guess you all heard the hoopla about Professor Darryl Bem at Cornell getting his ESP experiments into a peer-reviewed journal. Not even close to crackpot in his other work, he has demonstrated that some psychological tests work backwards, as if the subjects had fore-knowledge of the next events in the experiment ( Read more... )

Holy Cows and Chickens! Author Peter Watts is in court right now in Port Huron, MI, for sentencing, to see if the judge will give him a suspended sentence or clap him in irons to be hauled away for months as a guest of the state.

I am feeling weirdly nervous for him.

EDIT: 3:00 PM. According to his buddy David Nickel, he got off with $1600 fine ( Read more... )

I had read a few years ago the sci fi works of Peter Watts, and commented on his favorite themes, etc., and that I was impressed that he was up-front about his atheism being fundamentalist, not amenable to even God appearing to his personally. I like it when people have self-insight, you see.

Color me gob-stopped: Dr. Watts is a convicted felon ( Read more... )

Ah, I had forgotten the pleasures of watching some guy publicly wank, and Matt McCormick drops his pants for us:

Tuesday, January 16, 2007, 8:15 PM ( Read more... )